Monday, December 31, 2012

Aaron is a local jazz vocalist in town. If you like jazz, then you'll like Aaron's singing. However, I could not pass this up as he posted this on his facebook page. And when I say, "posted this on his facebook page" i do not want you to roll your eyes and dismiss, but rather look and appreciate. His parents just recently celebrated their 61 wedding anniversary. That shit doesn't happen frequently.

He also posted a picture of his old man back in Kansas City when his dad was one of the first black police officers in town. And I want you to look at this picture and tell me pride and handsomeness just isn't oozing from this picture.

There is no moral story or economic lesson. I'm merely just posting this up here because it's pretty damn cool and you wouldn't see this unless we all started posting it.

Friday, December 28, 2012

We are not a fad or a fashionable movement. We are not a "faux-crusader" hobby for people too lazy to work at anything (going green, PETA, veganism, etc.) We are a backlash against the biggest psycho-social atrocity foisted upon a people. You destroyed our lives, our country, our economy and our people. And without those things in our lives, we have nothing else to do but exact our toll of revenge.

No matter how complicated economists try to make economics, it really is a simple study. If you can understand core concepts like why you can't print off more money, what is "wealth," etc, you are about 90% there, heck, you're probably better than most economists who've been brainwashed to look at "production surplus charts" and are addicted to Black Swan econometric models. And so while economists on cable TV are citing macro and global economic figures and concepts, I want to introduce a simple, micro-concept.

If people don't produce, they will die.

Yes, we can make it more complicated. We can take overly productive people and have them support unproductive ones. We can borrow money from productive people overseas to support unproductive people here today. We can even borrow from productive people of the future who don't exist yet to support unproductive people today.

But in the end, if there are too many parasites and not enough producers, the system will fail.

What's funny though is if you look at the resources we spend on the unproductive people it has all the markings of a financial bubble.

We currently spend nearly 70% of our governmental budgets of wealth redistribution, supporting the unproductive people.

We are borrowing from other productive people in foreign countries to support our unproductive ones.

And we are borrowing from the future to support our current unproductive classes.

If you add it all up, the trillions of dollars we spend every year (whether we have it or not) on unproductive people dwarfs the Dotcom Bubble, the Housing Bubble, the Education Bubble, and the Retirement Bubble.

And like all bubbles, this one will pop as well.

The problem is this bubble is not a financial one, it's a human one. And when I say "pop" I mean impoverishment and death.

I do not wish to sound Malthusian about this, but there have been other "human bubbles" that have popped. Most notably when countries went full blown communism. China's great leap forward and Stalin's brilliant starvation schemes put the Nazi's to shame in their ability to kill. And it was all done in a very simple way - starvation. In short, the economic environment changed to the point the production or earnings (in the form of food) tanked and was not adequate enough to support the price (in the form of human lives).

Of course, these were a bit more rapid conversions from one economy to another, but the same thing is happening here in the US, albeit much more slowly. The government is growing and crowding out the private sector to the point it accounts for 40% of our economy. More and more people are dependent upon government for their survival to the point 1 in 2 people in the US now collect a government check. Our economic growth rate has slowed to about half of what it used to be. And the unproductive people tend to have more children than the productive ones, ensuring the ratio of parasites to producers will continue to increase.

The question is when will the bubble burst.

It's impossible to say, but like all bubbles it will come when lenders no longer extend credit. China will have had enough. The Arabs will have had enough. Even US bond holders will have had enough. They will realize the US does not have the economic productive capacity (desire, actually) to produce the wealth necessary to pay back its debts. At that point in time they will cut us off and the US will take on the mantle of a charity case, desperate of "foreign aid" much like Haiti or sub-Saharan African countries. There may be some debt forgiveness, but all the debt forgiveness in the world will not solve the problem of a lack of production. We will become a welfare state and get to enjoy the death rates, poverty rates, starvation rates, and infant mortality rates of our third world sister countries.

And we will all blame Bush and Big Oil.

Oh, I know, I know, this is harsh and how dare I talk about death, but ignoring it won't stop it from happening. Besides, this is how I enjoy the decline.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Yes ladies, it's happening. And since HR likes to do those things, we figured we'd just follow their lead and do the same!

Besides, you ladies always hate it when we're so shallow, looking at only the outside. You should be happy we take an interest in your personal financial management acumen and intelligence! Now is your chance to shine!

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Roosh provides you young boys with some valuable advice about dealing with a girl when she flakes out or stands you up.

I called it 505025, but the lesson is the same - always have stuff to do, and NEVER assume you're going out.

Girls flaking had gotten so bad at one point, and I so accustomed to it, I had forgotten I had a date one time because I just assumed she was going to flake. I was at the bar with some friends when I received the call.

Regardless, you always assume the girl is going to flake. Matter of fact, you may want to flake on the girl and cancel at the last minute. That technique is one of the few that has ALWAYS worked for me (meaning the girl was sure to go out with me when I "rescheduled" the date).

In the end no matter how much fanfare and hubaloo we put on the Olympics or sports for that matter, these atheletes have to answer to the real world of economics. They really don't produce anything of value, and I often wonder how many of the Olympiads regret dedicating their entire youths to being the best "flipper" or being the best "jumpy person."

Makes all those days playing Dragon Warrior or the Final Fantasy series seem not so wasted.

Usually, it is said that women are very competitive with each other. Women would prefer NOT to have women bosses in that there is competition. Women are always competing with each other for men. Heck, if you ask why women dress the way they do, it's not even for men - it's to compete against other women.

But while i'm sure there are strains of competition among the fairer sex, I unfortunately see more cartel-like behavior than competition.

For those of you who don't know a "cartel" is a group of companies that act like a monopoly. For example OPEC is a cartel of different countries that produce oil. Their intention in forming the cartel is to maximize profits. They do this by acting as a team, and not competing against each other. You can also see this when Lucky Luciano formed "organized crime." Beforehand the various crime families were fighting each other for territory. Luciano realized working together the different crime families would not only have lower deaths, but increased profits.

Regardless, cartels are deemed "bad" because they invariably result in higher prices for the consumer. This is why we have trust-busting and anti-trust legislation and usually break up monopolies - so many companies are competing against each other constantly improving quality and lowering prices.

I don't see that however in the "highly competitive" arena of women.

One chart if you will:

Admittedly both sexes are just as guilty, but what this chart shows me is that there is definitely no competition going on between women in the pursuit of men. If there was the pink line would be trending downward, not upwards. Further cementing my case women are cartelling and not competing is when you combine this with their prohibitive attitudes towards dating, courtship, and marriage, not to mention their insanely long and unattainable "requirement lists" of men. Women, unconsciously or not, are keeping the supply artificially low in order to command the highest price. No man is good enough for them, despite clamoring for "why can't I find a good man" and "where have all the good men gone?"

However, there's a funny little thing about cartels.

Sometimes a member of the cartel will "cheat." Meaning they will break away from the group and act in their own best interests. An example would be the oil embargoes of the 70's. OPEC managed to drive gas prices sky high in severely limiting the supply of oil. Prices got so high, however, members of the cartel were VERY tempted to produce a "little more" oil than they were supposed to, thus netting them significantly increased profits.

I ask the question, "why aren't some women doing the same thing?"

The reason I ask was I was discussing with a friend of mine about how simple it would be for women to snatch a man today. All they have to do is:

1. Be in shape.
2. Be nice
3. Be kind
4. Be reasonably intelligent
5. Be responsible/adult/mature

That's it. That's how low of a quality product the cartel has made. All an individual girl has to do is these five basic things and she will pretty much blow away all of her cartel sisters. She can snatch a man, just like that. It would be like being asking an adult to compete against 1st graders in a 2 mile run and the prize would be $5,000. HOW CAN'T YOU COMPETE???

This is not a question about, "how come you don't want super awesome guys like us?" It's more of a question of why, with it being so easy to compete, don't you? If "finding a man" means that much, how hard is it to hit the treadmill, lose 10 pounds, show up on time, not play mind games, and just follow those five commonsensical rules?

Alas, I'm an economist. Not a social-pscyhologist. And thus, I'll just sit here bemused wondering why OPEC isn't selling more oil at $450 a barrel.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Warning, "Girl Game" or "GG" is full of truth and factual data. GG is not for the weak at heart or people who prefer to be lied to even though it hurts their actual real world success. You should not read GG if you are on antibiotics or blood pressure medicine. Side effects include:

This goes in line with Ludwig Von Mises observation Marx's hatred of the division of labor was out of envy for specializing in a skill would result in different levels of status. Say an engineer vs. a social worker. It also explains fat acceptance.

The only problem is the language warning that the like of Mises never had to provide. But if you get to the later half of the article, Frost delves into the sad world of the marxist mind.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

So I'm watching The Military Channel on youtube, specifically the history of MiG's. I learn about this Soviet pilot who defected to the US by piloting his MiG 25 to Japan. In the Wiki entry I read about this other guy, No Kum-Sok aka Kenneth Rowe. The guy flies his MiG 15 from North Korea to an air force base in South Korea during the Korean War. I'm just wondering how gutsy was that defecting from North Korea, and flying an enemy plane to an enemy air force base hoping they let you land instead of shoot you down. Thankfully he has written a book about it. "A MiG 15 to Freedom." I just have one question:

"What can you do when you've spent your youth ignorantly advocating and voting for socialism?"

Famous conservatives today were liberals. Michael Medved, Joe Soucheray, and now Patrick Moore. Thankfully, they've at least done something. But what irks me is the "JOhnny Come Lately's" who in their 50's and 60's realized the crap they swallowed back in the 70's was nothing more than leftist garbage. Oooo! Great! You get 3 more election cycles before you die of old age! Good thing you only wasted the first 15 election cycles of your life voting to make my future hell!

Friday, December 14, 2012

I want you to follow me in a little experiment. And I'm being serious, I need to know if I'm missing something.

Victor Pride wrote a self-improvement piece for men. You may not agree with all of his methods, but if you read it, I think the majority of men and women would agree the majority (though, not all) of his recommendations are good things men should pursue.

I mean, if you want positive proof just how batshit insane feminists have become you needn't look any further than this "Jezebel" piece. The fact they mock and ridicule fiscal responsibility, self-improvement, and production is only proof that the feminist movement is not only delusional, but they're destructive. So people should do the OPPOSITE of what Victor is recommending?

DON'T START A BUSINESS?

DON'T BUILD SOMETHING?

GO INTO DEBT???

Precisely what kind of world do modern day feminists believe in??? I'm just curious, where does the money come from? Where does the production come from? Who produces the things you need and innovates new products and methods that lowers their prices?? Or does mocking and ridiculing things like "production" and "independence" qualify as genuine economic production in the feminist interpretation of economics?

I expect no sane, adult reaction from the little girls at Jezebel, but rather am using them as an example for everybody else to learn from.

If feminism has been able to convince women (little girls, actually) that things like fiscal discipline, spending within your means, production, innovation, and independence are worthy of mockery and ridicule, then the whole movement is not just invalid, but evil and insane. It is destructive and it is unfounded.

The question is whether people (especially women) are going to realize this and start to reject feminism for the co-opted evil political vehicle it has become, or just to continually subscribe to it for politically correct purposes, granting them the political capital they need to continue their evil agenda.

Enough time has passed I can tell this story without fear of people being identified or finding out.

This summer I went to a buddy of mine's wedding. He's a eclectic character, doing his own thing, so it was only natural he would get married later in life. His wife was from San Francisco, was a teacher, as were all of her friends. It was inevitable it was a hippie wedding, most people were liberal, but since it wasn't my wedding I knew enough just to be quiet and shut up.

However in being quiet and shutting up, it was interesting to see the wedding unfold, especially the bridesmaids.

The majority of the bridesmaids and female friends of the bride we in their 30's and not married. They all had very important careers (assistant art director, teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher, special ed teacher, teacher, teacher, drama director, etc.) and they were all noticeably vocal about "finding a man." But there was another thing I noticed.

They were RABIDLY econ-friendly.

Not a la "environmental terrorist" or "ELF" sort of rabid, but the first thing you picked up on was when you walked up to the facility there was one of these 30 something girls telling you how everything was laid out, where all the food was, but (most importantly) this was a "green wedding" and nobody would "have to worry" because everything was going to be recycled or composted. I remember the look in the girl's eyes when she hurriedly rushed to the part about it being a green wedding. A little blank, but this spark in her eye showed when she showed us the labelled bins (trash, compost, plastic recycle, paper recycle).

As the wedding progressed and the wedding party had to be herded from one function or room to another, sure enough there was always some 30 something friend of the bride highlighting the green aspects of the wedding. The confetti was biodegradable. Compost over here, oh "here, here is the recycle bin!" You can eat your chairs. And finally, when we all had dinner and it was apparent people would be disposing of their trash, a cadre of women got up and started orchestrating the disposal of the food. "Plastic recyclables go here, food for composting goes here!" They JUMPED from their seats and were eager to do this.

While this show within a show was going on, there was a guy I got to know a little bit. Foreign guy from a very poor country. We'll leave it at that. He started his own company here in the US and was very much a capitalist. He was also a very handsome fellow and knew it. He was alpha. And in sitting at our table I silently watched him just run circles around the plethora of 30 something single ladies. He talked about his little boy which melted their hearts (though he never produced a photo). He said all the right things. And smiling, constantly smiling. Sure enough when it came time to make sure people disposed of their waste properly, all the women at our table left, and I looked over to him and said,

"You know precisely what you're doing."

He responded, "they're all the same."

It was true. They were all the same. But in more ways than one.

Sure, they were women. They liked good looking confident men. They were also the same in their professions (liberal arts, touchy feely, no real economic production type jobs). They were also all single. But what really united them was how zealously religious they were about the whole green thing. Because with nothing else in their lives, flashing their "green credentials" was about the only thing they had left in life.

With no husbands, no boyfriends, no family, boring hobbies (oh, wow, organic wine tasting, who saw that coming!?), and jobs nobody really cared about (because they weren't interesting), these girls unconsciously knew on some level they weren't interesting people and didn't lead interesting lives. Teachers? A dime a dozen. Single? All people have been that before. You like to travel? Well who in the Patron's Saint Name of Frick doesn't? The foreign man was the most interesting fellow at the table, and thus he took up most of the attention. No one asked anything buy the basic courtesy questions about them. But once an opportunity for these girls to "do their thing" and show everybody just how good greenies they were popped up, blamo! They were performing like caffeinated monkeys in a circus.

NOw I don't know if they did that because they had nothing else in their lives. I don't know if they did that to impress the 2 or 3 alpha males in the wedding party. I don't know if they did it because they actually believe it. But whatever reason they did it, it was sad. For it was proof that K-16 (18 for some) education system merely indoctrinated them about "going green" and other leftist claptrap to the point they were damaged goods. 30 something, yearning to find a man, and instead of being an interesting person, or having an interesting career, or having a skill (say, ballroom dancing, or playing chess well), ALL they could do was puff their chests with their ability to compost and recycle.

Sadly, it's like hipsters or your average college liberal. They try so hard to "rebel" but lack the intellect to genuinely do so, all they merely achieve in the end is conformity and commonness. And there is no value in commonness and conformity. Alas, there's no shortage of 30 something liberal art-educated-and-employed-women who lack what men want, but hey, at least they can tell you where to get some mean organic wine from the Napa Valley!

"other women forced to work to pay for the day care and the taxes to pay other women to take care of their children while they take care of the other women's children and in reality all we've managed to do is take non-taxable labor of child-rearing and outsource it to government employees who now earn a tangible salary which can be taxed, so all we did is tax motherhood, disconnect children from their parents, and (despite claims of how good women are at multitasking) done a craptastic job at outsourcing the rearing of children?"

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

In writing "Enjoy the Decline" I was doing research as to what drugs your local pharmacy would have with exceptional value in terms of a SHTF scenario. So I called the local Walgreens (yeah, I'll mention the company!) and the pharmacist there was quite rude. So off to the internet I went and in came...

For this rapid response and kindness I hereby present The Patriot Nurse with the Captain Capitalism's "Well Hello 2nd Armored Award" (again, the 6:00 minute mark and 6:25 mark)

And no, I won't tell you what drugs they were. You'll have to buy the book!

From a reader. it seems the good nurse has unfortunatley suffered the loss of her fiancee recently. I cannot surmise what that is like, but I think we all better visit the good Patriot Nurse as a show of support. No woman deserves to have her fiancee lost before marriage. Please do visit the Patriot Nurse for all of your needs:

Shaming language, if you don't already know, is a response you get from somebody when you tell them something factual, that they don't like, but since it is factual, they can't refute it, and so they call you names.

That's about as simple as it is.

It's childish.
It's immature.
And simple minds use it.

Normally "shaming language" is used in the context when men speak candidly and bluntly about courting, women, dating, sex, etc. Because it is candid it offends the fragile sensibilities of most women. But since it is true said offended women have no legitimate retort. So the shaming language begins, typically mocking the size of a man's manlihood or questioning their sexual orientation.

For example, I made a video about how women do earn the majority of degrees, but that is only because the vast majority of those degrees are laughably easy degrees. I even went so far as to explain to women why this is for their own benefit because going $75,000 into debt for a Masters in English would only serve to harm them later.

Truthful? Yes.
Honest? Yes.
Even helpful to women? Yes.

But the inevitable shaming language of course came in:

Now shaming language is nothing new to real men who have refused to be politically correct and insist on speaking truthfully, candidly and unrepentantly about men, women, and so on. We don't care who it offends. We're sick of little spoiled children who think they're deserve 80+ years of un-offended life. And we're sick of the political and power structure that kowtows to it. Our lives are too short to be pissing away walking on eggshells. But I have stumbled on another hornets nest that has caused enough umbrage it's attracting a whole new variant of shaming language all on its own.

I call it "Going Galt Shaming Language."

Not to brag, but I'm waaaaaay head of the curve on this enjoy the decline thing. I've psychologically adapted myself to accept and benefit from the decline. I've given up all my previous dreams in life (simply because they're not feasible in this economy) replacing them with feasible ones. I am more grounded in reality and prepared than most people are. So when people ask me what I do for a living and I say, "as little as I possibly can" it triggers a conversation about minimalism and enjoying the decline.

Now most conservatives and men are intrigued and reluctantly have to admit I might be right. They are intellectually curious and the furthest thing away from being offended. But there are two groups that actually take umbrage and get pissed off when I say, "I'm not working any more. I'm doing as little as I can. I'm not going to let society live off of me anymore."

Liberals
Religious conservative types

Liberal women in particular take most offense. They can't believe somebody would check out and go Galt. Liberal men just dismiss me and think I'm immature. And the religious types go on about "who is going to keep the population going" or "we need more children to fight this war." But the language, oh, the shaming language.

"You're greedy!"
"You're selfish!"
"Why, you just don't care about other people!"
"Oh, you have it so good in this country! You're a white male! Stop you're bitching!"
"What if everybody did what you did!? You owe it to society!"

In short the new shaming language is to accuse anybody who has half a sense to live life and avoid work as a pouting child who's decided to pick up my toys and go home. That (once again) you're not a "real man/woman" if you don't "man up" and work hard and pay taxes. You're just a whiner, a complainer, a cry baby. Oooo! Boo hoo hooo! Da wittle boy doesn't wanna grow up and be a real man.

In reality it is very much like the shaming language when you voice an opinion about the sexes. It's about control. If you say you refuse to date fat girls, then the shaming language begins as a means to make you feel bad for wanting to sleep with skinny chicks. "Get back in line! How dare you have such thoughts!" But instead of losing power of what men should find/should not find attractive, it's losing power over the production and wealth transfer of a slave. So if the slave decides to leave the plantation (which we all can), the only way they can get us back is by shaming us for not wanting to stay.

I don't believe any advice is needed to explain why you should not feel shame for not trying your best. The generations of politically correct brainwashing and shaming language tactics are starting to show for what they truly are and people are not swallowing it anymore. Besides, anybody with 6 months work experience in this glorious economy knows just what a bunch of rubbish "working hard and having a successful career" means - 40% taxes, crappy benefits, a sadistic, power hungry employer, and incompetent/easily offended/compliant-filing co-workers. Oh, and you get to be loathed in public for being successful or "rich."

So pour yourselves a double. Break out that lazyboy. Fire up the old XBox and just make do with less. In the end all that shaming language is, is a bunch of nagging liberals scared to death you won't slave away to pay for their crap anymore and that their precious little government programs may go away.

Monday, December 10, 2012

One of the things I could not explain until recently was how the left not only wants financial equality, but also seems hell bent on social equality. In other words, I can understand where they want other people's money (that's just human nature). What I don't understand is how they also wage war against social or even biological differences. For example feminists trying desperately to claim "gender" is not biological, but socially driven. Swedes eliminating the words "him" and "her" from their language. Parents bringing up their children with no specific sex. Mothers need to be fathers and fathers need to be mothers. Or, all these leftist groups posing as atheist groups banning one religious symbol or another from public grounds. Or all the women (and some men) pushing for "fat acceptance." Whatever it is, the left wants no differences. Everything, money, status, social networks, physique, even your gender should be the same.

So I was reading "Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism and the Division of Labor"and it was one of those moments where you discovered a link that made you go "AHA! THAT'S IT!" (of course it was also one of those moments where you saw somebody had gone down this path before and that you are not unique or special and even if you had come up with your own epiphany, Mr. Fuller would be there in half a second citing the originator of that epiphany). And that link or observation was...

Marx hated the division of labor.

The ramifications and consequences of this are many, shocking and just outright scary.

Right off the bat this should tell you the man was an idiot, if not, outright insane. He wanted to abolish the division of labor. He wanted people to excel at everything and not be defined or anchored to any one job. Even the most rookie, fresh off the assembly line economist can see the flaws in being against the division of labor. But what scares me is how this miserable failure of a human (and he was) was able to get nearly half the globe to believe his claptrap. How can you take this man seriously, let alone when he purports to be an economist BUT IS AGAINST THE DIVISION OF LABOR????

It not only explains why every communist experiement has failed, but it also testifies to the intellectual weakness of people who swallow this poppycock.

But take the economic consequences of ignoring or "not liking" the division of labor, and look at why he was against it. It defined humans. It applied characteristics and traits to humans. UNIQUE characteristics and traits. And some of these traits are better than others, resulting in inequality. Not FINANCIAL inequality. Inequality in terms of strength, respect, admiration, and status.

It is here I cannot claim to make the link, as Ludwig von Mises did that already for me, but Marx and leftists in general are not just against economic inequality, they are against ALL inequality. It is why Marx and many leftists are against differences PERIOD.

Even if you were in a communist country, as a doctor earning the same as everybody else (0), you would still be deemed "superior" which would be unacceptable. So various measures would have to be taken to "humble" you or ensure you didn't enjoy a higher status.

What's really frightening though is what this psychology leads to and implies. Forget having more money than somebody else. Forget having a bigger house than somebody else. Worry about being just plain DIFFERENT from somebody else. In other words individuality should be punished. It is the group, or the state, or the commune that is more important, the individual does not matter, it is the borg.

But what's truly pathetic, and it shows you just what a sad, pathetic, worthless lot these people are, is to ask why they insist on destroying the individual.

The answer - hurt feelings.

That's it.

The whole entirety of communism and all of its ramifications and all the lives it's destroyed and hundreds of millions its killed is because weak, pathetic, sad, worthless humans don't want their feelings hurt.

Sunday, December 09, 2012

I was doing some research to see what energy consumption in the country looks like in that I don't know if I trust official government economic figures anymore and would prefer instead to look at energy consumption as a proxy for economic growth. The results were inconclusive (plus I think I had the wrong data set).

But then I found this gem:

Americans spent more calories of energy worrying and talking about renewable energy than calories burned using actual renewable resources!

Saturday, December 08, 2012

When you hear the phrase "market price mechanism" your mind instantly conjures up sad, nerdy academian economists with too much time on their hands and a desire to sound intelligent. So they come with some hoity toity sounding phrase and then banter it about much like rubric, paradigm and dynamic, mocking those who've never heard of the phrase, even though the phrase was created all of 10 seconds ago. However the "Market Price Mechanism" is not one of those phrases and is actually a VITAL part of any economy.

Specifically what it is, is the information a market conveys about the value of certain goods via prices. Say, for example housing. If you were like many Americans during the bubble, you were completely ignorant about all the underdealings and going-ons that led up to the bursting of it. Technically you needn't have been informed about these things because the market, inevitably, told you housing was too pricey when housing prices started to tank. The market was telling you "Hey, there's too much housing" or "hey, housing is not worth as much as you think it should be."

While this is one example, the information the market pricing mechanism conveys is even more important than that. Prices provide information about EVERYTHING in the economy. Is milk over priced? What's going on with gas prices? OBama got elected - well maybe silver is more valuable than it was before. Is that Furby really worth $400?

More commonly you see this play out in real time at lightning fast speed anytime you watch a stock market trade up or down. As information is released about corporate earnings, economic data, even things like weather ("Trading Places" anyone?), the vast amount of information is digested by the market and translated into second to second changes in prices. In other words the market pricing mechanism constantly reassesses the value of every item in the economy by taking in all the information that is relevant to the value of those items and conveniently translates that into a numerical dollar price for your brain to understand. You can then decide whether it is worth the price to pay for such an item or not.

Market pricing mechanisms, however, do not just apply to financial markets or commodity markets. You could contest that any time any information is conveyed to a human, that human's perception of whatever that information is about changes. So for example say I'm going tornado chasing and time after time again I see tornadoes have a tendency to show up in the afternoon as opposed to morning. I incorporate this information and then sleep in till 10AM instead of going out chasing in the morning. The problem is sometimes the information you get is wrong. And if you act on wrong information it can cost you.

Say a jealous tornado chaser doesn't like some noob in his neck of Kansas. He purposely lies to me and says, "Yeah, all the tornado chasing happens at night. It's great!" Then I will see no tornadoes.
Or David Lareah tells me during 2005 that housing is a great deal. I buy and lose my shirt on a McMansion. Such information can be considered "wrong" but it can also be "noise" in that it drowns out the real data resulting in bad pricing.

Now fast forward to today when (once again, I have no idea why) the memory of a girl giving me gift certificates to Sebastian Joe's (an ice cream parlor in town I like) popped into my head. It was long ago, she was a dance student of mine and she learned I liked Sebastian Joe's ice cream. At the end of class she brought me a gift certificate. In hindsight I see that the girl really liked me and probably wanted me to ask her out. But I never went out with the girl. That seemed odd to me today because she was cute and I would have gone out with her. Why didn't I pick up on that Sebastian Joe's ice cream certificate? Why didn't I act upon that obvious piece of information the market pricing mechanism was sending me?

Because other girls previous to her ruined the market pricing mechanism.

What I mean by this is previous to this girl I had suffered a torrent of instances where information I would have thought was giving me a green light, ended up being nothing more that false alarms or outright ruses. There was the one girl who invited me back to her place after a date, took me upstairs, took off her shirt, wanted a back rub and when I went in for the kiss she jumped back, shocked saying, "what are you doing???"

There was the other girl, only in her skivvies, in my bed. So sure was I of this one I turned her around, went in for a kiss, thinking nothing of it, and again, "Wait! What are you doing!? I can't kiss a man until I'm engaged!"

And let us not forget the countless times of married women who take their rings off, show up at bars or clubs, flirt with you and when it comes for a phone number or going back to a hotel, "Oh no! I can't do that, I'm married!" Alas, they were merely using you to test their market value.

With such erroneous information or "noise" flooding the market, the problem is nobody listens anymore to the market pricing mechanism. So when a SINCERE and legitimate piece of information hits the market (nice, sweet girl getting you ice cream certificates), you treat it with suspicion, don't believe it, and don't act on it because now all information is considered corrupt and unreliable.

The effects this has on the "dating market" is identical to the effects a dysfunctional market pricing mechanism would have on a financial market. With no market pricing mechanism, liquidity dries up. With no liquidity, there is no volume. And with no volume, there is no value. In other words, no trades are made, nobody buys anything, the market shuts down.

Now, this was happening in my 20's when it was fun and fashionable for young girls to play games. But 10 years later the women are "serious" and they're "done playing games." They've "had their fun and are ready to settle down." Why, you'll forgive them for their immaturities, won't you? They were just having fun, you understand. Tee hee!

Sadly, it's too late. Not in the sense they're in the 30's and "where have all the good men gone?" But the destruction of the market pricing mechanism explains another little phrase you commonly hear.

"He's not picking up on my clues! How can't he tell I'm flirting with him! Why hasn't he asked me out yet?! I've given him all the signals!!!!"

In short, men have become inured to the information the market pricing mechanism sends out. And while girls may be done "playing their games" and are NOW sending out serious and legitimate information, unfortunately nobody is listening, or, let alone dares to let themselves believe it.

What is the cost?

Well, consider my friend from yesterday.

He's in his 40's, has excellent game, is accomplished and is in good shape. He's conversing with a 25 year old thing who has a hipster boyfriend. The girl has dropped every imaginable hint about those two going out. "Let's go for drinks." "Let's get drunk." "I'm bored by myself." etc. etc.

Though accomplished, my 40 something colleague is nothing but skeptical. Would it be great to go out with a 25 year old thing and steal her from her hipster DB boyfriend? You bet. But if history is any indication, it is more likely she would just use him for drinks, OR, should he ask her out, she has the immediate shame-card, "why, GASP! I have a boyfriend! (you dirty, amoral person you - implied)"

The result?

We'll never know. He's opted to do nothing.

Financially that means a market price of zero, volume traded of zero, and a value of zero. Romantically, that means no dates, no courting, no romance, no nothing.

Your environment doesn’t change your borne temperament. It provides
little boosts to your happiness level, but it always falls back to where
it was at the start. Changing your belief system can definitely affect
the thermostat of your temperament, but only by a small amount. Do you still use your lunch break to go to the bookstore?

I call it tornado chasing, some people call it the Beartooth Rally, others call it "Mancation."

Was at the coffee store the other day. Writing my book. Saw a guy with his laptop out, also seeming to be writing a book, which he was. The conversation ensued and we had the following observations:

1. You stand a better shot at being successful self-publishing than trying to find a publisher.
2. The traditional publishing houses will be gone in about 2 decades time with only a handful of nepotist, cronyist remnants remaining for east coast trustfunders who can't figure out how to upload a book.
3. "Agents" are just as worthless as most publishers.
4. You will not make a ton of money scoring one big hit with one successful book. However, you will make enough money writing multiple books of moderate success.
5. Write series so you get people hooked on the first book, you have them for 4 more.

Here's his book. Former Lt. Colonel suffers from PTSD and becomes serial killer. Again, not economics or the genre we discuss here, but something for you book worms who may like that thriller suspense sort of thing.

Friday, December 07, 2012

Which means if you're going to buy something AND have it delivered by Christmas with a guarantee, you need to buy it NOW.

So procrastinate no more Cappy Cappites. Click on the ole Amazon link (sorry, fixed it!) and get some shopping done. Not for the Captain (though it does bring him warm economic fuzzies), but for yourselves. Besides, you always need something, might as well get it on Amazon instead of driving around all over the place.

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

The larger point for all races is the importance of
having fathers in children’s lives.Without
a father your children are going to go into the real world without knowing how
to deal with ½ of society - men.Your
daughters will have a heavily skewed biased towards their own self-importance,
but worse a dangerously naïve understanding of men, men’s sexual nature, and
the risks those pose.Your boys will
suffer as well.With no man to teach
them the harsh realities of life such as competition, independence,
self-reliance, self-control, and work ethic, boys will grow up woefully
unprepared for the real world.Not just
in terms of work ethic and skills, but they will have no clue how to interact
and deal with women.Their lives will be
failures, both financial and romantic, but worse they won’t know why.With no leadership or guidance, you’ve left
them to roam aimlessly for at least a decade, forcing them to figure it out on
their own through trial and error.This will
exact a heavy toll on their emotions and psychology, and that’s assuming they
are even successful in figuring it out for themselves, instead of living cluelessly for the rest of their lives.

Obviously you'd prefer to good off, but the real world requires you at least labor a little bit to sustain yourself.

The problem though with such a simple statement is that it ignores the biological and darwinistic conditioning of men for eons. Until recently (meaning, the past 300 years) men have been genetically programmed to keep working, not just to survive, but to secure a stable future.

Too bad, the men who did work harder than necessary will continue to breed their "pro-work" genes into future society, reinforcing that work ethic.

The reason I bring it up is to ask the question can men even turn off their work ethic?

Oh, I know, I know, generations of inferior men who've lived off of welfare, government subsidy, OWS-hipster-paretnal-subsidy, and parasitism can easily socially engineer themselves out of any biological hard-wiring, but for those of us who actually give a care about the future, can you turn it off? Much as I want to enjoy the decline, and much as I am successful at it, what precisely does a REAL man do with 5 hours per day in leisure? Video games are fun and all, but inevitably I cannot refute my biological imperative to produce something of value.

Mayhaps, some liberal men can help me? Mayhaps some OWS "professional activist" types can guide me? Mayhaps some fratboydaddywarbucks can guide me as to what I do with free time and leisure?

Oh, wait, that's right. You're not real men. You require other people to support you.

Monday, December 03, 2012

Warning - this post discusses sex and porn. All complaints will be ignored. If you don't like this, then be an adult and exercise your right to choose.

Bitterbabe cites an article about how the ease and accessibility of porn for men has killed their libidos as well as unrealistically increased their physical expectations of women. This is bad because it destroys relationships and "hey, women want to have sex too you know!"

But at its core this is nothing more than a simple lesson in basic economics. Namely, "substitute goods."

Substitute goods are precisely that. Goods that can be substituted for another. You may want to have an apple, but if there are no apples, perhaps you'll settle for an orange. You would like to go to Disney World, but the flight is too expensive. So you drive to Great America instead. You would like that platinum necklace, but the silver one will suffice.

The key relationship between substitute goods is that as the price of one goes up, the demand for the substitute good goes up as well. So even though you may really, really want that steak, if it's too expensive, you will instead order the chicken. But the reverse can happen as well. Say the steak is very affordable. But the chicken only costs $1. You may prefer steak, but the price of chicken is so compelling, you go with the chicken instead. Thus a significant drop in the price of a substitute good can force a significant drop in demand for the original good as well.

The issue with internet porn is no different.

Previous to it porn came in some physical form. It was hard to store/hide. It came with a price. You also had to physically go and pick it up. And there was an element of societal shame about it. But with the internet the effective price of porn dropped to zero. It was also made incredibly convenient. And now with an entire generation brought up with it, society has become inured to the idea of internet porn.

However, true to the law of substitute goods, a drop in the price of porn has caused a drop in demand for real sex. And this does not make the little ladies happy. Why sex was how they controlled men and lorded it over them like a weapon...errr...I mean "women like sex too, ya know!"

So let's do a little experiment and play "Amateur Economist." Specifically, I want you to think of it in terms of a business-customer relationship. Take the crassness out of it. Take the sex out of it. I want you to treat it as a genuine economic problem.

You are an economist at a high end consulting firm and a client comes in. She is the CEO of "GS" (General Sex, a spin off of GE) the sole supplier of sex in the country. Her sales are down, despite it being a monopoly. After some market research she sees there is a new substitute good being offered by another firm, Pron Enterprises. Pron Enterprises does not offer sex, but a substitute good. So when men are looking for sex here are their two choices:

General Sex- Go to the bars, hit on girls. Buy a bunch of drinks. Repeat for several nights over the course of weeks. Get some numbers, go out on several dates, and after a month of hard work, and about $1,000 in social expenses you get to have sex.

Pron Enterprises - Go home, spend 5 minutes on the internet, done.

The CEO of GS wants to know how to increase her sales!

"How or how Mr/Ms. Economist do I do this?!"

Bonus Cappy Cap points will be awarded for thoughtfulness and incorporating real world business principles to this problem!

A sad reality which has only gotten worse since the election is the increasing amount of depression I see in myself and my friends. Oh, I try, heck, I'm writing a book on how to ENJOY the decline, but I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't say the death of the United States doesn't bother me at least once a day. BUt still, I try to fight it and find reasons to live anyway.

However, while writing "Enjoy the Decline" I was put in such a depressed mood one day that it forced me to try to think through this problem. It forced me to really analyze what was bothering me so much. And out of everything wrong that is happening to the US, and out of all the bad things that are likely to happen as we switch to a socialist nation, the single, biggest thing I mourn is what the US could have been had we just kept going like we did in the 40's-60's.

I'm not talking about the amount of money we'd make, which I've addressed before, but what we could have achieved as a society in terms of culture, music, technology, space exploration, etc. The coolest thing to happen recently was Felix Baumgartner setting the parachuting record. And before that? Anything?

To make my point take a look at this plane, the XB 70
That thing was DEVELOPED IN THE 1950's.

In basically 20 years we went from propeller airplanes to a BOMBER that could do Mach 3. 10 years later, moon landing (and no comments about how NASA was a waste)

What have we done in the past 50 years? Yes yes, I know, a bunch of computer stuff, hurray . Great, we can text. But that's just the point, we will never know what we could have achieved had we kept up with the historical level of economic growth and technological innovation. Or another way to put it (though I can't prove this is true, I just remember hearing it somewhere) had the Roman Empire not collapsed, technology would have advanced much faster resulting in us landing on the moon before Christopher Columbus discovered America.

Sadly, the only way to speculate on what we could have achieved is to look back at the past. Not just to estimate would-be trajectories of various advances in the US, but even worse - some aspects of life were better back then.

Can anybody argue the women's rights movements of the 1970's did anything but harm the country?
Can anybody argue the Great Society did anything but harm and create more poor people?
And for the Patron Saint's Name of Frick, can we at least get some quality cartoons like Bugs BUnny again??? (yes, yes, I know too expensive, excuses, excuses, excuses).

The worst part of the US not achieving its best is that by default it makes it impossible for the individual to achieve his/her best. Being brought up in the 70's and 80's we were told/brainwashed that the US was the greatest country in the world and if you worked hard you could achieve anything. Certianly the historical evidence proved that. So why would a little kid think any different? It only served to inflate young kids dreams and expectations, making the crash even harsher. Sure enough, slowly, over the course of 20 years, entering adulthood, the economic realities of this nation and the idiots that voted those realities in whisk away your dreams, and worse, make you fear the future.

So now instead of worrying if there will be hover cars,
we worry if we can have cars period, let alone afford the gas.

Instead of worrying about whether you'll own your own personal plane,
we worry about whether we can afford a flight somewhere for winter.

Instead of worrying about finding the "right one"
you'll settle for somebody that doesn't have illegimate kids, hasn't filed for bankruptcy, and have a part-time job.

Instead of worrying about whether you'll be the best pilot, or best welder, or best accountant,
you're worrying if you'll just be able to find a job, period.

I know I say "enjoy the decline," but it takes a mighty strong person to embed that into their psychologies.

The Dave Foley Moment (DFM) is the instance where, regardless of government promises, the inability of the economy to produce the economic production necessary to make good on those promises, trumps those promises, thus delivering the recipients of such government largess a harsh and cruel economic rude-awakening.

For example, the Canadian judge has ordered Dave Foley to pay child support and alimony equal to 4 times the amount of money he makes. Governmental demands and promises made to Mr. Foley's ex be damned, the economic reality is that she will get nothing. Mr. Foley does not make enough.

Another example is all the promises of socialist economies. Food, wealth, health care. It doesn't matter if Stalin or Mao "decreed" everyone is entitled to food, the economic reality is the empty shelves.

I believe in the near future the United States will have its fair share of "Dave Foley Moments." For example all the classes of society that depend on government checks to pay for their lives will be very upset when, despite Barack Obama's guarantees they "entitled" to such largess, the productive members of society just up and go Galt, leaving the US Treasury without the funds to make good on those bribes...errr...social programs.

Old people will also have their DFM's when, sure, that social security check came in the mail, but because of significant inflation it only buys half of what it did a couple years ago.

Young people who voted for Hope and Change v. 2.0 will see their student loans crush their financial futures, not to mention the labor market realities crush their employment prospects when nobody hires the "Music Therapy" major, except Starbucks.

Oh, there's going to be a lot of Dave Foley Moments. And it's just another instance of how god loves us and wants us to enjoy the decline!